Nikkei stock exchange has just opened. Shanghai and Hang Seng markets open 90 minutes from now.

[Poll_Blind]

View developments here or here.



PB

[leveymg]

1. Kibuki theater. They will understand - it's all been a phony crisis to stampede us into cutting SS/

Medicare and the rest of the social net.

If we refuse to carry out their plan they will have to raise the debt ceiling, the markets will have adapt, like we've had to adapt.

If they can't adapt, we'll do without them. Send them that message.

[Poll_Blind]

2. It'll be interesting to see what actually happens, if anything.

I tend to agree with you, though. We'll see.

PB

[leveymg]

7. Not as much as they would want us to believe. Finance is all about expectations,

and those are always subject to change going forward. That's the first rule of investing - don't look back, or you'll trip and drop the ball.

[Matariki]

3. WHAT does Social Security have to do with the national debt/deficit?

Apart from the fact that it's been borrowed from? Why isn't anyone in the media or politic talking about or questioning this?

I don't get it.

[Earth_First]

4. HUSH!

Or it's off to the stockade with the rest of the rabble-rousers!

[in_cog_ni_to]

5. NOTHING, nada, zip, zilch....

:grr:

[Poll_Blind]

8. Absolutely nothing. NOTHING. It's purely pandering to Republican demands.

This is purely your future and mine, your family and mine, on the chopping block because the President thinks that it's "worth it".

It's not.

PB

[girl gone mad]

6. No meltdown.

Can we stop w/ the hype?

[leveymg]

9. The implication of this is that if we refuse to go along with their terms, they will accept the loss

We don't don't have to.

[Doctor Hurt]

10. No meltdown because everyone is expecting it now.

It'll come, it's just the when that will be surprising.

[leveymg]

11. There's been discounting for this contingency for years. No surprises. The losses have

already been realized from the inevitable day that the US people woke up and told the Adminstration and Wall Street - Dude, we're still the most powerful empire on the face of the earth. Take your punishment somewhere else.

If they tried to take the US down, we would and should nuke them or hunt them down.

[Doctor Hurt]

12. your reply is utterly insane

yours is not a serious post. not worthy of any more reply than this dismissal.

[leveymg]

13. That is always the first response when a chord is struct. I am so glad to hear that from you.

Next comes the paranoid accusation that it wasn't sincere. It was. You want to escalate form there? It only serves to spread the message.

Made it past the first barrier - ignore the message. Thank you.